The Hater's Guide to Apple's New Gear

Apple's big product announcement yesterday delivered its expected burst of cheering, excitement, and hype. Those new iPhones are ultra-thin with gloriously large displays. The Apple Watch looks like something people might actually want to wear. And Apple Pay could be the first credible attempt at mobile payments. There's a good chance Apple will take all of our money with at least one of its latest creations.

The devices are impressive, no doubt. But they aren't perfect. Here, some of the hangups, gotchas, and unpleasant truths that Apple would prefer you didn't notice:

The Credit Card is Very Much Alive

Now that Apple is taking aim at mobile payments, pundits are scrambling to predict the death of the credit card. As CEO Tim Cook demonstrated yesterday, who wants to fumble through a wallet or pocketbook when you could just tap your iPhone or Apple Watch at the checkout line?

We hope they're right, and that Apple Pay works seamlessly and securely. But keep the plastic in your pocketbook for now. During the Cupertino event, Apple played up the many banks and chain stores that would support Apple Pay at launch. But even with Whole Foods and McDonald's on board, Apple Pay will work at only 220,000 stores when it goes live—about 6 percent of all U.S. retail stores—and it won't be available outside the United States.

As for OpenTable's slick restaurant payment system that Apple showed off during the keynote? It's currently limited to a few dozen eateries in New York and San Francisco. Keep that platinum card handy.

The Cost of a Killer Camera

The iPhone 6's camera sounds like a major leap forward, with a new signal processor, phase detection autofocus, improved face recognition, and 240 frames per second slo-mo. The problem is that all those optics don't fit neatly into the new iPhones' ultra-thin frames. As Mashable's Lance Ulanoff points out, the camera now protrudes from the rear panel, breaking the uniformity of previous models. It's not a huge concern, but could cause some twitchiness among the design-obsessed.

Where's the Wi-Fi Calling

The idea is long overdue: Instead of burning up voice minutes, the iPhone 6 will let users place calls over the Internet when connected to Wi-Fi. It can even start a call on Wi-Fi and then transfer the connection back to a wireless network when the user leaves the house.

The problem: Your carrier has to be on board with this, and the only confirmed U.S. carrier to support this feature so far is T-Mobile. If AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint are on board, they certainly aren't shouting about it. Someone's got to sell those MicroCells, after all.

"Reachability" Has Its Limits

With the extra large iPhone 6 Plus, Apple has abandoned the argument that small screens are best. Instead, it's trying to make one-handed use easier on the new 5.5-inch iPhone with Reachability," a mode that temporarily slides the top half of the screen down into thumb range.

It's a clever trick, but it doesn't solve all the problems of a jumbo display. The iPhone 6 Plus isn't just taller than most phones; it's also wider, so you may struggle to reach buttons near the opposite edge of the screen. Ultimately, "reachability" should be a design ethos rather than a special mode, with key interface elements at the bottom of the screen to begin with.

Base Storage is Still Stingy

Apple is indulging in a classic upsell on iPhone 6 pricing. Sure, you could get the 16 GB iPhone 6 for $200 on-contract, or the iPhone 6 Plus for $300. But for just $100 more, you can quadruple the storage to 64 GB. For another hundred bucks, octuple it to 128 GB.

The Apple Watch Needs a Nightly Charge

Tim Cook and crew conspicuously said nothing about battery life when Apple announced its first smartwatch on Tuesday. It was only after the event, in a statement to Re/code, that Apple acknowledged the need for a nightly charge.

Apple is also omitting some other key details for now, such as the dimensions and weight of the watch face and the process for installing and managing apps on the device. The Apple Watch is clearly a work in progress, not a ready-to-launch device.

The iPod Classic is Dead and There's No Replacement

Following Tuesday's press event, the iPod Classic received a dishonorable discharge from the Apple Store. It vanished without notice and left music fans without an Apple option for a high-capacity, low-cost MP3 player. You can still grab an old iPod Classic from Best Buy for now. Or you can give up and start streaming all your music instead.

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